1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to grounding apparatuses, and, particularly, to a grounding apparatus of a portable electronic device with a sliding mechanism.
2. Description of Related Art
Sliding cover mechanisms are widely used in portable electronic devices such as mobile phones, laptops and personal digital assistants (PDAs). Generally, such portable electronic device includes a base, a cover and a sliding apparatus, and the cover is slidingly mounted on the base via the sliding apparatus. The cover includes a liquid crystal module (LCM), and the base includes a circuit board. The liquid crystal module is electrically connected to the circuit board via a flexible printed circuit board (FPC).
When the aforementioned portable electronic device is used, it may be damaged by a high electrostatic discharge (ESD). For example, when walking on a carpet floor, a person can easily acquires static charge with high electrostatic. The static charge is likely to cause an instantaneous discharging between the body of the person and the portable electronic device. Thus, the discharging could possibly create an electrical current significantly enough to cause damages to the circuit of the portable electronic device. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent the circuit of the portable electronic device to from being damaged by electrostatic discharge.
In use of the aforementioned portable electronic device with a sliding cover mechanism, a typical method to prevent the circuit from being damaged by electrostatic discharge is directly connecting the flexible printed circuit board to a grounding plane to conduct the electrostatic charges. However, the flexible printed circuit board usually does not have the ability to conduct an electrostatic discharge higher than a thousand volts.
Therefore, a new grounding apparatus is desired in order to overcome the above-described shortcomings.